1824: The Arkansas War (56 page)

But rebellions and uprisings were almost invariably savage, no matter the color of the men involved. The negroes he was fighting here were part of a regular army, established by a government that the United States had diplomatically recognized. Still did, for that matter, even if war had been declared. Harrison could only hope that they’d conduct themselves like white men.

Whether they did or not, however, he would. Civilized behavior and custom was determined by its own imperatives, not petty bargaining with breeds outside the law.

“See to it, Captain Matlock, if you would. I want any wounded Arkansans gathered where they can be given medical attention, whenever our surgeons can be freed from tending our own. There’s probably a suitable area somewhere in the Post.”

He started to move off but paused. “And place a guard over them, Captain. Reliable men, with a steady sergeant in command.”

“Yes, sir.”

An hour later, after he was sure the regular units were steady and Harrison was satisfied that they could repel any Arkansas counterattack, he went downriver to see how the militias were doing. He took Captain Matlock with him, since he no longer had any of the three lieutenants he’d had for aides at the beginning of the battle. Fleming was dead; Riehl would be retired from the service with that wound, assuming he survived; and he’d finally found the missing third lieutenant.

The lieutenant had been brought before him, rather. The youngster’s wits were quite gone. He’d been found by soldiers from the 7th huddled in a ball some fifty yards from the lines, weeping uncontrollably. Harrison had a vague recollection of sending the boy with orders to Colonel Arbuckle. He’d never gotten there, apparently, his nerve having completely broken along the way.

Harrison still couldn’t remember his name, and the young lieutenant had been too incoherent to provide it himself. No matter. He’d learn it when the time came to put together a court-martial. Which there had to be, given the circumstances.

Harrison would be demanding the death penalty, which was called for in cases of pusillanimity in the face of the enemy. He didn’t care for the idea, but he simply had no choice. The nameless lieutenant who’d die in a few weeks at the end of a rope would be just one more casualty that could be properly laid at the feet of Clay and Calhoun, from Harrison’s viewpoint. In a short war, sins could be forgiven as well as washed away. In a long war, they couldn’t. Simple as that.

The commanders of the militias—those few of them Harrison could find, most having run away with their men—were livid.

But Harrison’s energy was coming back, and he was no mild-mannered man himself.

“Shut. Up.”
He glared at the loudest of the Georgian officers. Insofar as the term “officer” wasn’t a bad joke to begin with. The man was actually a Georgia state representative whose military experience was entirely limited, so far as Harrison knew, to having gotten himself appointed a “colonel” in the expedition for the sake of garnering some more votes. Georgians seemed to grow militia colonels with the same profligacy that they grew cotton. And they were just about as fluffy.

“You had three thousand men,” he rasped, “to face not more than seven hundred. And you tell me the fault was
mine?
You ran like rabbits from a force a quarter the size of your own because
I
didn’t give you proper support? Be damned to you, sir!”

Angrily, he pointed back at the Post. “My
regulars
defeated the forces we faced while taking the fort as well as preventing the enemy steamboats from coming into play.”

That was taking some liberties, perhaps, but it was technically correct. By ancient custom, the army that held the field at the end of a battle was considered the victor, even if the term was more a formality than anything else. The fact that the Arkansans hadn’t been “defeated,” so much as simply choosing to withdraw from the field, could be ignored.

The American forces at Lundy’s Lane had done the same, after all, whereupon the British had claimed to be the winners of the battle. In the world where professional soldiers dealt with each other, it simply didn’t matter. Protocol would be respected, even if both sides knew perfectly well that, in all important respects, the battle had been something quite different.

The Georgian and his three fellows were glaring back. So were the two Louisiana officers present. One of them was also a state representative—also with the rank of “colonel.” It seemed to be an iron law with militias that they had as many colonels as they did privates, with precious few majors or captains—and not a single paltry lieutenant—anywhere to be found.

They could glare all they wanted. What could they
say?
Even politicians playing at being soldiers had enough sense to realize that their forces had suffered a complete humiliation today.

Not that it would make a difference in the long run, Harrison was gloomily certain. They’d shut up today, sure enough. But in the months to come—half of them would be finding excuses to leave the campaign as soon as possible—they’d be back in their state legislatures and doing their level best to ruin Harrison’s reputation. So would their fellows in the Congress of the United States. Unfortunately, while militias were rarely worth much on a battlefield, they were quite potent in the American political arena.

“So just shut up,” he repeated. “And I’d recommend you get busy rounding up your men.”

He waved a hand at the surrounding countryside. “Leave them out there for very long, and they’ll be coming back in pieces.”

The glares started to fade then, replaced by worry.

“I’ll provide units from the Fifth and Third to help you,” Harrison said, in a milder tone. “With some artillery.”

That eased the worry from their faces some, but not much. These so-called officers weren’t really concerned about the military aspects of the situation so much as the political ones.
They
would have to answer to their constituents directly, where Harrison would at least have the shield of the professional army. And all they had to do was look around to see that a lot of their constituents were now dead, an equal if not greater number were badly injured, and all the survivors would be blaming them for the disaster, no matter how much of it they tried to shift onto Harrison’s shoulders.

So would their relatives back home. Especially those whose husbands and sons weren’t coming back.

“And you’d better detail some burial parties right away,” Harrison added. “Big ones. This is the Delta in July. That many corpses will stink like you wouldn’t believe, give them any time aboveground.”

The sergeant in charge of the guard over the wounded prisoners being held in a room of the Post was simply amused.

“Do ye now?” he asked, in a pronounced Irish accent. He glanced at his four men. “D’ye hear that, lads? These gentlemen from Alabama wish to wreak havoc upon yon niggers. Having failed the task miserably, mind, when the niggers were on their feet and had guns in their hands.”

“It ain’t funny, you fucking Irish—”

Click.

The Alabaman who was more or less the leader of the little group froze. The musket barrel held by one of the sergeant’s men was now pushing under his chin. It was cocked, too.

“Hey, fella…”

“Oh, there’s no point pleading with Private Aupperle,” the sergeant said, still grinning. “Dieter doesn’t speak but three words of English. The first two are ‘fuck you.’ The third is ‘asshole.’ He got off the boat not six months ago and joined the army straight off, that being the only trade he knows. How’s your German?”

The six Alabamans stared at him.

“My German’s quite good. Even if the dumb Krauts complain about the accent.”

“Can barely understand him,” the corporal growled. His accent was German, whereas the sergeant’s was Irish, and even thicker.

His expression was a lot thicker than the sergeant’s, too. “Fucking militia
scheisskopf.
You go home, two months. Maybe three. Half of you already running there now. We will be here long time. Get out.”

He brought up his own musket and cocked it. “Get out
now.
”

“Best do as he says, lads,” said the sergeant, as cheerily as ever. “Dieter’s even-tempered, being from the Palatinate. Corporal Affenzeller, it grieves me to relate, is not. Juergen’s a Swabian, alas. A surly breed; they’re known for it.”

After they were gone, a few seconds later, the sergeant chuckled. “Even in Alabama, now.”

Private Dieter Aupperle uncocked his musket. He uttered several phrases in German that were most uncomplimentary on the subject of militias in general. So did Corporal Affenzeller, after he uncocked his own weapon. But, having considerably more knowledge of their adopted country as well as its language, he added details and specifics.

“—fuck pigs, being Creoles, no better than filthy Frenchmen. But at least the French have a few brains. Georgians can’t figure out which end of a pig to fuck in the first place. Alabamans—”

Late in the afternoon, a delegation from the Arkansas Army showed up under a flag of truce. Harrison ordered them escorted into the Post.

Sam Houston, in the flesh. Harrison had never met him, but the man was one of those few in the world whose reputation genuinely preceded him. In the United States, at any rate.

To Harrison’s much greater surprise—he’d known Houston was serving in the enemy colors—Winfield Scott came with him. Along with a poet whose name Harrison couldn’t remember, even though he could remember reading two of his poems. One had been a gloomy thing, full of histrionics on death. Overwrought, the way poets will be about the subject and professional soldiers won’t. But the other had been a poem about a man’s thoughts watching a waterfowl flying in the distance. Harrison had been quite taken by it.

While he listened to Houston, Harrison’s mind was at least half on Scott and the poet. They represented a real danger to him, which Houston didn’t at the moment. He knew why they were there, of course.

“—the eighteen prisoners who are uninjured or walking wounded, we propose to exchange immediately against a similar number of our own. It’s your choice, but we recommend that you permit us to continue providing medical attention to the other thirteen prisoners.”